Category Archives: Wisconsin

No, this isn’t an excerpt from a movie: it happened. Less than a year ago. In our country:

“…Early in the morning of October 3, 2013, armed officers raided the homes of R.J. Johnson, …Deborah Jordahl, and several other targets across the state. Sheriff deputy vehicles used bright floodlights to illuminate the targets‘ homes. Deputies executed the search warrants, seizing business papers, computer equipment, phones, and other devices, while their targets were restrained under police supervision and denied the ability to contact their attorneys…”

This was the way that Wisconsin’s “John Doe” investigation actually started, and the quoted passage above is from U.S. District Judge Rudolph Randa’s ruling on the legality of the investigation itself. The five-county probe has been looking for possible illegal coordination between Governor Scott Walker’s election campaign, the Wisconsin Club for Growth and numerous other groups and individuals during the 2011 and 2012 recall elections.

Pretend for a minute that a video existed which showed out-of-control, right-wing, Conservative Republicans with their faces hidden by masks and bandannas. Pretend they were all screaming, cursing and basically behaving like your average Muslim Brotherhood supporters.

Not just audio, mind you: VIDEO.

Is it any stretch of the imagination to assume that such a video would be shown on every News Channel, every 20 minutes, …PLUS Comedy Central, …PLUS all the daytime shows?

Such a video DOES exist, …but since it concerns folks on the Left behaving like animals, the media has immediately begun channeling Marcel Marceau, and thus we don’t hear so much as a peep from them.

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The following story springs from Wisconsin, a state which has already seen more than its share of crazy Lefty activity in the last couple of years, as you might “recall”.

Thanks to legislation signed by Governor Scott Walker this year, there’s an open-pit iron mine being developed up in northern Wisconsin. Since this will provide resources, jobs and be a general boon to the economy, NATURALLY the Left has a visceral hatred for it and wants to shut it down immediately.

The American left as we have come to know it suffered a devastating blow in Wisconsin last night. The organized heart of the left gave everythingit had to the fight against Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker: heart, shoe leather, wallet and soul. The left picked this fight, on the issue and in the place of its choice; it chose to recall Walker because it believed it could win a showcase victory. That judgement was fatally flawed; it is part of a larger failure to grasp the nature of American politics and the times in which we live.

The left gave this fight everything it had. It called all the troops it could find; it raised all the money it could; it summoned the passion of its grassroots supporters, all the moral weight and momentum remaining to the American labor movement and every ounce of its strength and its will.

And it failed.

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Voters in Wisconsin didn’t reject a role for the state in regulating the economy and easing the harshness of life in a market economy. But they turned decisively against the argument that well-paid armies of life-tenured bureaucrats can produce enough good government to justify the cost. And the lesson of the election isn’t that the right has too much money; the lesson is that while the left still has plenty of passion and fire, it has, thanks in part to the power of public sector unions, largely run out of compelling ideas.

So take a victory lap; enjoy a beer; ….and get back to work. The other side will soon be done licking their wounds, and will redouble their efforts. Which means they’re scared.

Believe it or not, by winning his recall election, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has done his foes – the Wisconsin Democratic Party, the public sector unions, the progressives and angry leftists – a favor.

He has liberated them from the soothing illusion that they are popular, and that the public agrees with them.

Although the final count got a bit closer by the end, Scott Walker crushed Tom Barrett last night in the Wisconsin recall election by about 170,000 votes, 53% to 46%. And if you aren’t aware, yes, that’s a lot. Especially when CNN was saying that the exit polls looked like it was going to be a coin-flip and go far into the night.

If you pause and listen carefully, you might be able to hear the despair coming from Jim Messina, President Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, and David Axelrod, Obama’s top strategist and communications director, as the meaning of Wisconsin’s recall election becomes clear.

In the final hours before Governor Scott Walker’s victory, with the writing on the wall, President Obama and his campaign could only muster a tweet and a last-minute video for challenger Tom Barrett. But do not let that tepid support fool you: Democrats and their union allies spent an astronomical amount on a judicial election, four state legislative recalls and the recall of Governor Walker, only to lose.

Democrats, Big Labor and Team Obama initially put all their chips on the table, organizing a massive get-out-the-vote effort to unseat Walker. The day before the recall, Wisconsin’s MacIver Instituteillustrated just how much money Big Labor has spent: more than $21 million. Earlier in the month, the MacIver Institute put up a matrix to “put an end to any stories that Big Labor, the Democratic Party and other left-wing organizations aren’t going all out to recall Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.” The spin aside, Team Obama, Big Labor and Democrats were heavily invested and suffered a huge loss in Wisconsin.

Almost never reported fact: the union political operatives are paid, boys-n-girls, yet money paid to them doesn’tget counted as money spent on the campaign. Not realizing that is what allows displays like this……..
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That’s classic; I’m gonna have to save that clip….

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Last point: for over a year, the media covered the recall effort, telling us over and over that it was vitally important, and then just within the last couple of weeks told us not to worry about Wisconsin anymore: it was just a local election. Yeah, NO implications for the general election to be found there.

Nope, nope, no sir. Nothing to learn from Wisconsin at all.

Well, does THIS face look like last night’s election had “no national implications“? I don’t think so…

WI govt. employees make an average of $50,774 in wages and benefits. Private sector workers makes about $1800 less. Nationwide, govt. employees earn 10-21% more than their private sector counterparts. This doesn’t include retirement health and pension benefits.

Private sector employers paid 5.3% of payroll toward employee retirement plans. Before Gov. Walker, taxpayer money paid between 10.55% and 13.3% into the Wisconsin Retirement System for government employees.

Before Gov. Walker, govt. employees paid less than 1% to fund their pensions. Taxpayers paid the rest ($1.4 Billion in 2010).

Nationwide, the average worker pays 30% of the costs of their health insurance. Before Gov. Walker, WI state employees paid an average of 6% of their health insurance costs. Gov. Walker’s reforms now require state and local govt. employees to pay 12.4% of health…